Brenda León
Latino Communities Reporter, Report For AmericaBrenda León is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Brenda covers the Latino/a, Latinx community with an emphasis on wealth-based disparities in health, education and criminal justice.
Before coming to Connecticut Public, she completed a Master's degree in Spanish-Language Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She attended Lehman College at the City University of New York (CUNY), where she studied Multimedia Journalism with a concentration in Political Science. While there, she was a presenter at WWRL La Invasora 1600 AM. Her work has been published by The Gothamist, Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), El Deadline and the Mott Haven Herald.
In her free time, Brenda enjoys cooking, going on long walks with her son Leo and caring for her plants.
You can email her at bleon@ctpublic.org and follow her on Twitter at @bleonesx.
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At a small church in Bridgeport, one nonprofit has helped hundreds of domestic workers collect wages that were stolen from them.
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Hartford Public Library has received a grant aimed at helping young immigrant women remain in school and complete their college degrees. The new program is called “Barriers Can’t Stop Us: Building Immigrant Women’s Success” and is intended for students who came to the United States while still in high school.
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In March, Hartford school administrators and recruiters made their way to Puerto Rico looking for bilingual talent to fill content areas like math, science and history.It’s part of Paso a Paso, a program to recruit bilingual teachers to fill much-needed roles in Hartford.
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Hundreds of families made their way to the second annual Back-to-School Extravaganza in Hartford over the weekend. The event filled a local parking lot with five tractor trailers of fresh food — and a one-stop shop for the new school year.
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A local community production aims to celebrate the diversity of Blackness. The performance was created by an international Afro-feminist art collective and will be a U.S. premiere.
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Connecticut families have until July 31 to claim the Connecticut Child Tax Rebate. The Department of Revenue Services estimates that only about half of eligible households have applied for assistance.
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Connecticut state regulators have been working to help people disproportionately affected by the war on drugs gain a foothold in Connecticut’s legal adult-use cannabis industry.
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Across Greater Hartford, over 1,000 students have kicked off their summer with a paid job. For six weeks, these young people in and around Hartford will gain professional skills in everything from the retail sector and governmental organizations to hospitals and law firms through the Summer Youth Employment and Learning Program. Still, organizers say they didn't have enough openings to meet the demand of thousands of student applicants.
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A report by the group Connecticut Voices for Children focuses on the hurdles that immigrant and refugee families face when trying to access early child care and education services.
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Mayor Luke Bronin has announced that Hartford will award nearly $2 million to over 60 groups providing youth services across the capital city.